Echo Park Bartowski
by afishcallednorman
Summary: Chuck Bartowski is one of the best and has been for ten years. When luck starts to turn and a letter reminds him of what he left behind, what will he find when he goes home. Apologies to Grosse Pointe Blank and the author who's title and idea I borrowed(with permission).


A/N: Borrowed(with permission) the title and basic idea from another. Don't own Chuck and make no money doing this so a lawsuit would be counter-productive. No Beta.

Echo Park Bartowski - The beginning.

A lone figure, garbed from head to foot in black clothing, sat hunched over a keyboard. The clicking and clacking of fingers typing rapidly was almost entirely absorbed by the acoustic tiles that almost completely covered the three walls of the tiny cubicle with the small amount of sound that did escape being almost immediately lost in the mostly open area of the vast work space that took up the entire thirty-seventh floor of the sleekly modern high-rise that looked over downtown Dallas. The soft glow from the computer monitor was almost completely blocked by the person seated on the over-sized rubber ball that was the only piece of furniture in the small workspace. Every flat surface, from the desktop to the shelves were attached to the surrounding walls by a rather ingenious series of camouflaged brackets and short lengths of chrome chain.

The sound of someone whistling off-key caused the figure to freeze and then to glance hurriedly at his watch, wondering what the hell the security guard was doing making his rounds off of his regular schedule. The awful rendition of The Proclaimer's '500 Miles' seemed to drift closer and the late night typer ducked quickly when the bean from the nightwatchmen's flashlight started to swing about. The 'ball-sitter' managed to stay atop his round perch by some fortunate mixture of balance and luck and the light beam swung through the air mere inches above his head. He knew better than to believe it was the years of training that alone had allowed him to keep from toppling to the floor and he sent a silent 'thank you' winging to whoever had been watching over his 'clumsy ass' so far tonight.

The sudden cessation of the atonal whistling prompted a quick case of goose bumps to erupt and the hairs to stiffen on the back of his neck at the prospect of having been discovered. Holding his breath, he slowly looked around, expecting to see the portly, uniformed watchmen to be heading in his direction. After a cautious look to his left, he had just started to look to his right when the horrendous whistling resumed, sounding further away than it had been moments before. Daring to raise his head slightly, he breathed a shallow sigh of relief when he saw the beam of the flashlight suddenly blink out which was immediately followed by the sound of a Maglight being slid home into a support ring on the guard's just a bit, he raised up a little higher and then silently thanked his unseen 'helpers' when the man waddled from view, heading in the general direction of the bank of elevators, hopefully off to visit another floor. Releasing the breath that he wasn't even aware he'd been holding, he took a slow breath and then a deeper second one before settling back into his previous postion and allowing his fingers, after a slow ten count, to resume their assault of the keyboard.

Keeping a wary eye in the general direction the nightguard had taken, he typed from memory, completing line after line of code. Pausing for a second, he reached a hand up and scratched at his skull through the wool ski mask before letting his hand fall back into place beside the other, both of them once again flying across the keys with a grace and familiarity that would have made anyone watching stare in amazement. The speed and dexterity of the dance of the digits would have no doubt, in anyone's mind, that the man at the keyboard had more than just a passing familiarity with computers.

If any of the office's regular occupants had been present, they would have been stunned as line after perfect line of programming code appeared at what would've seemed like an inhuman rate. The non-existent watchers would have been further flummoxed to learn that the hands, from which the perfectly formulated and previously unknown program flowed, belonged to one of the best hackers in the world.

For several minutes the keyboard dance continued without slowing until two things happened at once. The elevator call signal dinged and the sound of a closing door echoed from the far end of the office space. Looking up. the late night typer was shocked to see two flashlight beams starting to bounce around the office space, their lack of a pattern indicating that the new arrivals didn't have a set location in mind, that they were just searching for 'something'. Before he could begin to wonder what might possibly be going on, the speakers built into the frame of the monitor in front of him began beeping just as a large, flashing 'warning' icon began to pulse from the center of the screen.

"Shit" Chuck Bartowski hissed to no one in particular and the world in general. "Shit, Shit, Shit" he continued under his breath, his fingers faltering for a split second before returning to the work while he raised his eyes for a look around.

A quick glance down and a sudden shift in the motion of his fingers stilled the flashing icon and quieted the beeping. Once the closest distraction was taken care of, he raised his head for a look around even as his hands seemed to redouble their efforts on the keyboard, their speed seeming to increase. When he noticed that both of the flashlight beams were moving in his general direction he lowered his head once more and, somehow, his fingers picked up even more speed, the digits seemingly occupying three or four positions at once. Looking back up, he found that the nightguards had halved their distance to him and, without looking down, he lifted one hand and sent it on its own mission towards one of the pockets of the vest he wore.

With a practiced ease and speed, the freed fingers were soon pulling a thumbdrive from it's resting space and moving it towards the USB port on the side of the monitor. A slight change in rhythm and the hand at the keys was typing a new command as their counterparts slotted the tiny device that Chuck had hoped he wouldn't have to use. The dexterity with which the opposing hands, with different chores, worked together, was almost magical. Chancing to look up again, he noticed that the two guards were now paused and speaking softly into the small radios that were clipped to the left shoulders of their uniforms while looking about with quick, apprehensive movements.

Looking back down and finding the expected pop-up menu for the thumb-drive, he slid the cursorover and double clicked the execute command, grinning to himself when he heard dozens of other computers around him suddenly come to life and begin making the same racket that the computer he was seated in front of had been making less than thiry seconds before. Looking back up, he wanted to laugh aloud when he saw the confusion on the faces of the two frozen guards as every monitor on the entire floor suddenly began flashing, the unexpected bursts of colored light throwing odd shadows around and completely changing the feel of the environment. What used to be an re-assuringly quite work space was transormed, thanks to the sudden bursts of sound and shift areas of light, into some sort of scene from a 'nerd rave' with the only things missing being a thumping bass line, a smoke machine and hundreds of empty cans of RedBull.

Moving the cursor again and stabbing a finger at the enter button caused the text to disappear from the screen, replaced by moving splotches of color that looked like a fire works display that, instead of having bright flashes and trails from exploding points, would slowly expnad outwards and then melt away, only to re-appear somewhere else on the screen.

The sound of jingling keys and hesitant footsteps made him look up, not needing to watch anymore to be sure that his 'assassin' program was 'killing' the computer system he'd been hired to hack,plunder and leave no trace of his work. He'd gotten the information he'd needed and had been in the process pof covering his tracks when he'd tripped some unseen trigger and now he was mainly concerned with making a safe real world exit for himself. He'd worry about explaining to his employer what had gone wrong once he was away from the immediate danger.

Pocketing the thumbdrive he'd just snatched from the USB port, he spun on the ball-seat and eased to his feet, cursing his luck when he realized that the two watchmen had managed to cut off the main escape route he'd mapped out over a month ago. As he re-arranged his exit strategy, shifting to his 'B' plan, he couldn't help wondering if his flashes of bad luck during the last three months were the universes way of telling him it was trime to get out of the business.

For almost ten years he'd been one of the top cyber specialists in the world. Of course the FBI and several other three letter groups labeled him a 'cyber-terrorist' but he slept well every night, knowing he'd never crossed the line that many of his collegues had no compunction about crossing. Unlike his main competition, 'Jeffster', he'd never stolen from anyone who fell on the 'good' side of his own personal moral center. Sure, his personal center may have been alittle into the general 'dark' side of things but he still had some lines he just wouldn't cross but the last three months had pushed him sorely.

Three months ago, he'd been running a simple hack and dask of what he'd considered to be a simple system when some two bit 'backwash' program had surprised him, slipping past his defenses and inserting itself into his laptop like some European porn virus, leaving his favorite laptop as nothing more than a very expensive paper weight.

Five weeks after that, he'd been performing a corporate 'pump and dump' of an employers competition when the FBI's cyber task force had kicked in the front door of his apartment in San Diego, following up on an anonymous tip. Somehow, bad luck had turned to good and the flat tire on his car had left him sitting in a BuyMore parking lot, riding their free WiFi while federal agents tore through his home with a scary efficency. While he'd been bouncing his signal around the globe, the government fired a 'cannon shot' across his bow.

The loss of the apartment wasn't as bad as it could have been, thanks mostly to the fact that it was rented through an untraceable shell company. Within days of the raid, he'd have removed all electronic evidence that the Feds may have gathered, replacing it with pictures of monkeys smoking cigars, bulldogs riding skateboards and squirrels water-sking. The fact that made the raid painful was that they'd managed to find one of his lock boxes. He normally kept them in a rental storage locker but a small fire had prompted him to pick up the box a day before the raid and he'd forgotten to load it into the car that morning. The hundred thousand dollars was untraceable and replaceable but, the fourteen extensively research and constructed fake identities had been a hard blow.

Slamming into a locked stairwell door that was supposed to be open snapped him back to reality as he bounced backwards, barely keeping his footing as he fought to remain upright while struggling to keep a lid on a very lengthy and colorful string of profanities that he was sure would have made any sailor proud..

"Dammit' he cursed, letting one profanity go as he rubbed at his shoulder that hadn't gotten along to well with the locked door.

The sound of the security guards getting closer to his now blocked avenue of escape forced him to pause, struggling to remember his back-up, back-up plan. Pausing to re-orient himself, he took a deep, cleansing breath and then a second before taking off towards the opposite side of the building, ducking and weaving as he went, doing everything he could think of to mis-direct or, maybe, throw off his pursuers.

Just as he neared the office that he hoped to make his escape through, his blue tooth started chirping in his ear. Only one person knew his 'private' number and he slapped at his ear while pushing the office door closed behind him.

"This better be important, Hanna" he growled while crossing the medium sized office to stand in front of it's lone window. Reaching into one of the larger pockets of his 'work' pants, he pulled out one of his latest inventions. He'd hoped to test it before using it in the field but his belief in his own abilities had made him a hasty.

Pushing the suct5ion cup against the window, he gave a miniature plunger severl pumps and then flipped a tiny toggle switch before stepping back to see if his calibrations had been correct.

"The client just called and they're very unhappy about..." a voice announced in his ear as he stopped at what he was sure would be a safe distance from the large plate glass window.

"How could the client already know about tonight's problem?" Chuck asked, the exasperation in his voice hiding the surge of pride he felt when the wall of glass in front of him suddenlt seemed to liquify, millions of tiny shards of glass flowing downwards and covering the carpet below the now empty window casing.

"Cool" he mumbled to himself before moving forward. Pausing briefly, he bent down and scooped up 'window cleaner' before stepping out of the office and onto the window washer's rig that was stationed just outside, right where his '3rd' back-up plan had called for it to be.

"Not tonight's client, Mr. Bar...uh, Carmichael, although I guess I should be expecting a call from another unhappy client sometime soon? No, the complaint was about our last job, Mr. C" the voice explained in his ear while he set about making sure that there was nothing to further impede his escape. Reaching out a hand, he flipped a lever and engaged the down function on the 'rig'.

"What have they got to complain about? They got the information they wanted, didn't they?" he barked, looking upwards and being pleasantly surprised that no one seemed to have tumbled to his avenue and method of escape.

"Yes sir, they got the information but you failed to plant the incriminating evidence so the authorities would have been able to arrest that scum bag" Hanna finished, making no attempt to hide the contempt she felt for the politician who'd been the target of the operation.

"Tell them I'll..."

"We'll."

"OK, OK, we'll give them a fifty percent discount on their next contract."

"Mr. C, that's so nice. You offering to work for nothing. I'm sure they'll be OK with that. Now, on to other..."

"Wait a minute! I didn't say free! I said fifty percent..."

"Yes, and after I atke my cut, you're going to be doing the next job for free. Now, on to the next item of interest..."

"Hanna, slow down please. I'm trying to execute my 'escape plan C' and you want to chat about..."

"Your ten year high school reunion, Yes sir."

"My what?!" Chuck sputtered out while looking over the edge and then quickly looking away when he realized that he was still at least fifteen stories from the pavement.

"Your ten year high school reunion, sir."

"How did you even..."

"I had your mail forwarded from your sisters years ago...what little there is. So, should I RSVP for you sir?"

"NO! Absolutely Not! Under no circumst..."Chuck stopped abruptly right after escape 'vehicle' slammed to a stop with a sudden jerk. Before he could begin to look for whatever was causing the sudden stop in his downward progress, the far end of the scaffolding dropped away with a sickening snap. Reaching out with both hands, he found one hand clutching at nothing while the other manged to wrap around the small le ver that jutted out from the rigs controls.

"HOLY SHIT!" he yelped as the entire wieght of his six foot three inch frame dropped and then, just as suddenly, stopped short, the sudden jerk sending stabbing pains throught the upper right half of his body.

"Mr. C?" a very concerned voice sounded in his ear.

"Oh shit" Chuck moaned, fighting against the blacknessd that was flitting around at the edges of his conciousness.

"MR. C?!" Hanna's panicked voice sounded in his ear, both close and impossibly far away at the same time. Before he could gather the strength to answer, the breeze, that had suddenly picked up, slammed Chuck Bartowski into the side of the building with enough force to disconnect his Bluetooth leaving a very worried brunette staring at a now lifeless phone.

"Chuck?" Hanna Nyguyen whispered fearfully. "Chuck?"


End file.
